Of course Trump was going to release the memo. He ordered it, after all, like an overdone steak with a side of ketchup. Via The Post:

GOP memo criticizing FBI surveillance is released

A GOP memo alleging surveillance abuses by the FBI has been released, intensifying a fight between the White House and Republican lawmakers, on one side, and the nation’s top law enforcement agency over whether the origins of a probe into Russian interference in 2016 were tainted by political bias.

President Trump had approved release of the memo without redactions Friday morning.

The president told reporters in the Oval Office, “I think it’s a disgrace what’s happening in our country. A lot of people should be ashamed of themselves and much worse than that.”

The FBI and the Justice Department had lobbied strenuously against the memo’s release. In a statement Wednesday, the FBI had said it was “gravely concerned” that key facts were missing from the memo, which, it said, left an inaccurate impression of how the agency conducted surveillance under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Yesterday, Paul Ryan said the memo isn’t “an indictment of the FBI, of the Department of Justice.” Trump yanked the rug out from under his widow-peaked lackey about 12 hours later with this tweet:

The top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans – something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago. Rank & File are great people!

So, now we get to find out if Trump and his stooges can convince folks that the all-Republican, Trump-appointed FBI and DOJ leadership team and overwhelmingly Republican investigator crew are biased against the president who hired them and in favor of the candidate the FBI sandbagged just days before the election.

This absurd theory is already an article of faith on Fox News, but will it resonate outside the 27%? US Senator from Florida Bill Nelson, not known to be a wild-eyed lefty, said this:

By releasing this memo, the President of the United States is undermining the credibility of our intelligence community and serving a huge victory to Vladimir Putin, the Russian government, and many other intelligence services.

This morning on Fox they had 20 minutes of FBI bashing. Then they followed that with a story about preparations for Super Bowl security. They interviewed the FBI SAIC. So if the FBI is bad why are they in charge of Super Bowl security? SMDH

Speaking of Lawfare, I told you earlier in the week that my kid’s new job is at CQ. It’s actually CQ Legal. Her stories go to Westlaw/Reuters where they live behind a very tall pay wall. I can’t even read them. Maybe some of you law type people have access

Intelligence Committee Republicans, led by chair Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), leveraged an obscure House rule never before used by the committee to override the classification of the document, arguing that its findings are serious enough that the public deserves to know about them.

As I said downstairs, because of course they did. Rules and norms are for little people.

Cheers,
Scott.
(“Who wonders what important news today will be buried by this bit of theatre…”)

“The latest attacks on the FBI and Department of Justice serve no American interests — no party’s, no president’s, only Putin’s,” he said. “The American people deserve to know all of the facts surrounding Russia’s ongoing efforts to subvert our democracy, which is why Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation must proceed unimpeded. Our nation’s elected officials, including the President, must stop looking at this investigation through the warped lens of politics and manufacturing partisan sideshows. If we continue to undermine our own rule of law, we are doing Putin’s job for him.”

I wonder if asshole Orange Fuckhead will not allow the Dem rebuttal to be released because that’s what assholes do. Also too, I want any fucker who enabled this pig to be ‘elected’ locked up and the keys the on away.

The memo complains that the Democratic Party funding of the work in the Steele dossier should have been disclosed to the FISC and wasn’t. It doesn’t matter where the evidence came from, just whether it meets the court’s standards. In any case, the first FISA warrant was in 2013, long before the presidential campaign. The memo doesn’t mention that the first work by Fusion was funded by the Washington Free Beacon, a rightwing rag.

The FBI Agent’s Association released a statement yesterday supporting Wray. It would be nice to see an update, in response to the idiot’s tweet, along the lines of, “Thank you for your kind words in support of FBI rank and file. We, the rank and file, remain committed to all investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election, as well as investigations into obstruction of justice.”

The top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans – something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago.

@eric: Jesus Christ, I initially thought, right on! Then I read it again. Yes, in fact, the attacks do serve one party’s, and one president’s interests. The elected officials concocting these side shows have ONE party affiliation. FFS McCain, you’re going to croak soon. Screw up the same courage you found as a POW and tell it like it is!

@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: That’s why the build up is so significant. Most people won’t read it and don’t have the context to understand it. They will take their cues from what others tell them. The first FISA warrant against Page was in 2013, before there was a Trump running for president and before there was a Steele dossier. That’s all anyone needs to understand that the FBI could not have been motivated by either the campaign or the dossier when it chose to follow Page’s interactions with Russia. Nunes is a traitor, full stop, because he is either trying to protect himself directly, or indirectly under threats from Trump if he doesn’t do this.

The memo also complains about the use of a Yahoo News article. There are typically 50 or 60 pages of material submitted in support of an application for a FISA warrant. Any one of them will be insufficient to support the argument for a warrant, which is why there are 50 or 60 pages. Criticizing one at a time is beside the point, unless you are going to criticize all of them. And don’t forget that there were previous FISA warrants on Page, which presumably turned up useful information.

Steele spoke to the media after he became concerned that the FBI was sitting on the material he gave them. Unless that was his plan all along, the material he gave them earlier should be as he represented it.

I’m not knowledgeable about Bruce Ohr and his wife’s putative relationship to Fusion research. Steele thought that Trump should not be president because of the material he turned up.

Comey briefed Trump on the dossier because it had been widely circulated during the summer and fall of 2016. Someone about to become president should know that something like that is out there. IIRC, Comey said he was clear that the dossier hadn’t been confirmed. (Just as this memo hasn’t been confirmed, because its sources are classified.)

Strzok was heavily advocating more investigation into Clinton and wrote a draft of the infamous Comey letter. That information came out after the memo was written, but you’d think these guys would have had access to it.

@eric: If that was McCain, good for him. But I wish he’d go a little further and say something along the lines of, “The President’s attempts to obstruct investigation into Russian interference in our elections do not suggest the actions of an innocent man, or a man interested in upholding the oath he swore as President to the Constitution.”

@MisterForkbeard: They can’t very well blame this on The Kenyan IslamoFascoSoshulist time-traveling again to set up his foes years before they acted. Whatever they claim has to at least sound reaso- oh, FFS who am I kidding.

I think Rosenstein is more protected now in light of the memo. He might get fired (by Sessions?) For something at some point, but to do so for this would relate directly to the Russia investigation from which Sessions is recused. So who fires him? The President can, but won’t.

Strzok was heavily advocating more investigation into Clinton and wrote a draft of the infamous Comey letter.

As I have previously stated, it is a real problem for me that Strzok ever found his way initially to the Mueller team. It seems he has a history of radical and unprofessional behavior while on the job.

I am sure puzzled. I cannot figure out which bits make it top secret – the FBI firing Steele as an informant? – Just the fact that the FISA order was for Carter page
there was another one for Papadopoulos? Mainatining the secrecy of FISA orders? Didn’t we already know all that?

Is it knowledge about the FBI opinions at different times – which give insights into what the FBI methods are?

I sure don’t feel that I have learned anything new. Maybe that Steele was being monitored and that is how they know about the Yahoo news leak so thoroughly?

To call the memo a nothingburger is a mistake, it actually debunks a couple of insinuations about the Trump/Russia case that Republicans have been making for months.— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) February 2, 2018

Some things the Nunes Memo does not explain away:1) The hack of DNC servers by 2 Russian intelligence agencies2) George Papadopoulos's contacts with the Russians3) Michael Flynn's negotiations with the Russian ambassador4) the Trump Tower meeting5) Firing Comey

@Chyron HR: Sadly, I’m actually seeing some of this on twitter. “Trump is awful and I don’t trust him, but we all know Hillary personally removed 200k votes, personally made superdelegates happen and threatened them into voting for her, cheated on all the debates and totally sold our uranium to Russia, so I’m not sure we’re better off. We should have voted for Stein or Bernie.”

@LAO: Pretty much like anything else coming from Donald Trump, contradicting and undermining in a single act some story that Republican conspiracy theorists have been feverishly constructing for months.

Glenn Kessler @ GlennKesslerWP
Memo actually confirms a timeline not favorable to Trump:
1. Counterintelligence probe opened in July 2016 by FBI because of George P./Wikileaks/emails.
2. FISA application on Carter Page obtained late Oct. 2016, after Page had left Trump campaign.

The Republican document mischaracterizes highly sensitive classified information that few Members of Congress have seen, and which Chairman Nunes himself chose not to review. It fails to provide vital context and information contained in DOJ’s FISA application and renewals, and ignores why and how the FBI initiated, and the Special Counsel has continued, its counterintelligence investigation into Russia’s election interference and links to the Trump campaign. The sole purpose of the Republican document is to circle the wagons around the White House and insulate the President. Tellingly, when asked whether the Republican staff who wrote the memo had coordinated its drafting with the White House, the Chairman refused to answer.

@Corner Stone: Yeah, I guess my point was that even people totally committed to claiming “well both sides have valid points” can’t follow the damn thing enough to make their case. “Well Andrea, it seems that there was a nemo, it says here, clearly a reference to some sort of sort of secret underwater mission, and a claim that one of the original documents called the “carter page” has gone missing, and then, uhm..”

Heh. My car is one of those ubiquitous slightly metallic greyish-beigeish colors, but the official name is “Mocha Steel.” When’s the told me that at the dealership I burst out laughing and told the salesman it sounded like a stripper’s stage name. I think he was slightly offended.

@Bill E Pilgrim: Trying to explain or justify this memo is like trying to tell someone how to tie various knots used aboard sailing ships, but not using a rope to demonstrate.
“So, the rabbit runs around, then around again, then through the rabbit hole, then under and back and back into the rabbit hole.”

@catclub: That is probably true. For foreign intelligence sources to learn about our gathering capacities (who do we bug, how deep does our Intel burrow, how quickly can we get a secret warrant) that date would be super useful.

@catclub: I’ve got that 2013 wrong, although I suspect that the dates and anything included in the warrant application are classified. The surveillance seems to have been prompted by Papadopoulos’s revelations.

My guess is that McCain is pretty close to the end of his life and may not be totally lucid anymore. He may have left instructions or an outline to his assistants about what to say in certain events, but who knows. I don’t think that he will be with us much longer…

sorry no tweets for a little while i read the memo and it was indeed 100x bigger than what started the American Revolution so I had to rush from Boston on horseback to rouse the people— Alexandra Petri (@petridishes) February 2, 2018

I am trying to figure out how to teach my students, as lawyers, to read this memo. One tip is the same as reading a warrant — first, drop out any and all conclusions. Then, from the facts remaining, take out adjectives. Then look at what you have.

In this case, legally, nada.

ETA. One more step — if you have a question about a fact, you need it answered. And if a fact doesn’t seem related directly to the issue, ignore it.

@MisterForkbeard: People will never, ever, be able to face their complicity in putting Trump in power. The pain and the shame is too great. They will always blame HRC and the democrats for not, somehow, being good enough or clear enough about the danger of Trump. People just can’t take the shame of their stupid, vicious ill informed choices.

I’m facing up to how I’ve changed during this cruel administration.
After reading this morning about HUD rent increases + work requirements for the oldest and poorest—and ICE/GOP treatment of a teenage immigrant—and obscene grab of public land—I saw this headline:
Scott Pruitt Orders EPA Employees To Stay In Office Over Weekend While It’s Being Fumigated
and accepted more outrage. Started to click to read, until I saw it was a wild alliaceous plant.

Ohio Dad was just about to leave work — this is probably his last week of half-days — when one of his co-workers turned up the audio of some talking head announcing the memo (knowing the fellow who did this, probably Fox). Most of the office huddled around like old timers around the radio.

This was followed by five of the other six in the office breaking into a chant of “Lock them up.” Fortunately, OD was able to steal away before anyone noticed he was gone.

@Ohio Mom: So do I, a coworker just came back from lunch and asked if we had read the memo – when we said no (we’re actually working), he said it should be required reading. He’s a Trump supporter so he buys into the whole thing. Unfortunately, he’s not the only one.

@Miss Bianca: thanks. I think? This is part of my long term effort to teach my students that as lawyers, they shouldn’t hold any opinion that does not have a credible basis (and can withstand reasonable opposition)

Hasn’t pretty much everything about Carter Page in the Steele dossier turned out to be true? Isn’t it pretty obvious that Steele wasn’t globetrotting on his own dime to dig up dirt on Trump associates… I’m like 99% certain the FISA court people would know it was a product of opposition research (or maybe anti-Trump corporate intelligence or paid for by someone in the media).

@Zach: Your questions make the common mistake of applying logic to a political stunt. The veracity of what is in the memo or the Steele dossier does not matter one bit. All that matters is “MEMO!” We are talking about playground bullies. When has anything a playground bully ever said ever made any sense?

The IC is going to have to start a sustained campaign of damaging leaks, before it’s too late. The “dossier” talking point is being cemented into RWNJ’s minds – that this whole witch hunt is based on a dossier bought and paid for by HRC, and then lied about by FBI leadership.
That’s in the Trump base as solid evidence right now and if it is not countered it will seep into the minds of the mushy middle and low info everybody else. It’s impossible to explain the FISA process to average people because they just don’t give a shit. But start talking about a false, slanderous, “dodgy dossier” and you’ve got their lizard brain’s full attention.

@burnspbesq: @Immanentize: If I had it to do over again, I think I would have picked law school. Interesting how my dad pushed teaching for me and law school for my brother. I honestly think I’d have been much more suited for lawyering than teaching, and my brother would have had a much happier career as a teacher than as a lawyer. Oh, well!

@Zach: No. The dossier rhymes with a lot of events, but it isn’t precisely true. Carter Page went to Russia and talked to some Russians, but not the ones identified in the dossier. And the dossier says they were talking about a payoff, but we don’t know what they were talking about. Page says it was innocuous.

If this prompts more investigation into Carter Page and the group of weirdos surrounding him – Papadopoulos, J.D. Gordon, Sam Clovis, and Jeff Sessions – it will be a good thing.

@Cheryl Rofer: Thanks for nothing, Jimmy! This administration, and its wrecking ball approach to any institution that gets in the way of maximum grift and fraud, is as much your responsibility as any of the millions or morans who voted for it.

@Jim, Foolish Literalist: They really do have problems evaluating things. Everything is the same except for one point that they might have in common. So giving your wife a dozen roses and a box of chocolates for valentines day is the same as giving her a wilted daisy and a fun sized Hershey bar left over from Halloween. A bombing of another country that results in 100,000 civilian casualties is the same as the Blue Angels showing up at an air show. It wouldn’t bother me so much if their job wasn’t to provide analysis. A big part of analysis involves making evaluations and categorizing things. Why aren’t they ever fired for sucking so much?

No. The dossier rhymes with a lot of events, but it isn’t precisely true.

My feeling is that a lot of the imprecise things in the dossier might be a result of telephone-type miscommunication going from people who actually know what the sources of Russian extortion are and Steele’s sources. For example, maybe Trump isn’t being extorted over doing whatever with three prostitutes in a hotel suite, but he apparently was extorted for sleeping with at least two porn stars and at least one of those was pretty easy to find out about.

What angers me is that they have dragged out the memo news drop with timing that imo seems well-orchestrated. (Making me angry again about the perfectly timed handling of Weiner’s computer and the FBI announcements at the end of the campaign.)

It’s an important story. But timing to manipulate news coverage is one thing the R’s are very good at. (High-priced consultants, paid for with those big contributions from donors.) I noticed contradictory leaks from “WH sources” about the memo yesterday. Both could not be true, so yes the media is letting itself be used for excitement and distraction.

Other stories that landed this week may or may not hang around for long. Like this one, which imo should be on the national evening news tonight. With a lot of context as a longer piece, but that would be dreamland. It will be eclipsed because ‘it can wait’ (the memo is NOW). Or appear and be shortened, or shifted to the weekend. Or disappear after a few days, like most other ICE/justice stories.

U.S. Army veteran and green card holder with a felony drug conviction began a hunger strike Wednesday to protest his likely deportation, after a federal court denied his appeal to remain in the U.S., where he has lived since age 8.
Miguel Perez Jr., 39, a Chicago resident who served two tours of duty in Afghanistan and recently finished a prison term on a drug conviction, had sought to remain in the U.S., arguing his life would be in danger if he were deported to Mexico, where drug cartels target veterans with combat experience to work on their behalf, or else.
A three-judge panel for the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected that argument last week.

Cheryl and/or Adam – any opinion on the press stories about North Korea and the Trump Administration today? e.g.The Pentagon Is Afraid to Give Trump More Military Options on North Korea. Has this been discussed already?
In particular, have the warmongers among the Trump administration been identified? And what does Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster actually believe ./ what has been been saying?

The national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, believes that for Mr. Trump’s warnings to North Korea to be credible, the United States must have well-developed military plans, according to those officials.

But the Pentagon, they say, is worried that the White House is moving too hastily toward military action on the Korean Peninsula that could escalate catastrophically. Giving the president too many options, the officials said, could increase the odds that he will act.

Ah…um…let’s see: “signs point to ‘no’ ” (although it’s a pretty good bet that Hair Furor will be tweet-knocking critics all evening, starting in 3, 2, 1…)

From your other comment:

The IC is going to have to start a sustained campaign of damaging leaks, before it’s too late. The “dossier” talking point is being cemented into RWNJ’s minds – that this whole witch hunt is based on a dossier bought and paid for by HRC, and then lied about by FBI leadership.
That’s in the Trump base as solid evidence right now and if it is not countered it will seep into the minds of the mushy middle and low info everybody else. It’s impossible to explain the FISA process to average people because they just don’t give a shit. But start talking about a false, slanderous, “dodgy dossier” and you’ve got their lizard brain’s full attention.

Like different-church-lady, I think they’ll accelerate, not start…and they’ve already been doing a heckuva job. The RWNJs, the 27%, they were never going to be open to this or change their minds about Trumpov anyway. But pretty much everyone else keeps seeing the evidence – and more importantly, the desperation – piling up.

I’m glad it’s out. It’s nothing but a hail Mary pass and to the 73%, that’s exactly what it looks like.

Perez, who has two children who are U.S. citizens, is one of many legal permanent residents who served in the U.S. military and then confronted the possibility of deportation to their native countries after committing a crime. Perez said he mistakenly thought he became a U.S. citizen when he took an oath to protect the nation. He says his military superiors never offered to help him expedite his citizenship.

After his military service, Perez sought treatment at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Maywood, where doctors diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder. He was supposed to return for more tests to determine whether he also had a traumatic brain injury.

Perez said he discovered the citizenship oversight when he was summoned to immigration court shortly before his September 2016 release from Hill Correctional Center in Galesburg. Instead of heading home to Chicago from prison, Perez was placed in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and transferred to a Wisconsin detention center for immigrants awaiting deportation.

Perez’s attorney Chris Bergin said he has filed a stay on two grounds. One is based on a medical evaluation finding that Perez needs immediate attention for PTSD and his brain injury. The other seeks retroactive citizenship for Perez to when he joined the military in 2001.

I have pasted the following from Kevin Drum’s blog as a reminder this is just not about President Trump, but the whole Republican Party and Conservative Movement, and that they have been profoundly anti-democratic (small “d”) since at least the rise of Newt Gingrich in 1993-94. These people have been a threat to the United States and its founding, liberal, principles since they emerged from the Right Wing ghetto in the 1960s and 70s, a combination of madness and reaction to restore aristocratic rule after being shut down by FDR for a generation.

I would add to Drum’s spiel the following. McConnell, Ryan, Nunes, McCarthy, and all are not just supporting Trump because of fear of the Republican Base (or as Driftglass calls them, “the Tribe that Rubs Shit in their Hair” but of the the plutocratic donor class for whom the Republican politicians are just sock puppets.

“…I am, generally speaking, pretty confident that we will all survive Donald Trump and the country will get back to normal. But it’s stuff like this that gives me pause. If you want to make a case for the slippery slope into fascism or whatever, this is your best bet. Real authoritarians—as opposed to wannabes like Trump—would recognize this playbook and nod approvingly. The first thing you have to do is get control of the security forces. That means smearing the leadership as corrupt and then purging them, to be replaced by loyalists.

Of course, you can’t do this unless your own party goes along. And boy howdy, are Republicans going along.

You need a core of devoted followers. Trump has that in evangelicals and racially aggrieved whites.

You need the press to report everything at least neutrally even if they know your charges are obviously phony. That’s happening too.

And you need a weak opposition. Trump has that because, let’s face it, the FBI has never been a liberal favorite. Most of the time we’re griping about their racial insensitivity or their treatment of suspects or their mass surveillance. It’s hard to turn on a dime and suddenly become their biggest boosters.

Finally, you need to put on a show for the masses, and we’re sure getting that with the Nunes memo, aren’t we?

Like I said, I still think everything turns out OK. Republicans have been running this playbook for a long time. Today it’s FBI corruption. Before that it was Hillary’s emails, Benghazi, the IRS, Solyndra, and Fast & Furious. And before that it was their insane investigatory jihad against Bill Clinton. Even now I don’t think most people have come to grips with just how much of the Clinton stuff was invented and planned as part of a very deliberate campaign.

The GOP has been Newt Gingrich’s party since 1994. I’m not sure it’s even fair to say that Trump is taking it to new levels. He’s just bringing it to life more effectively than anyone before him. Either way, though, he is Newt Gingrich’s Platonic ideal of a politician brought to life. You bluster for the cameras endlessly. You use words to change reality. You attack any institution that can offer a credible alternative to your reality. You lie so often it becomes the truth. You pretend to be a populist but make sure to retain the support of the corporate class. Newt wrote the playbook. Trump is finally the quarterback who can follow it.” https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/newt-wrote-the-playbook-25-years-ago-republicans-finally-have-a-quarterback-who-can-follow-it/

You’ll be shocked to find out that he thinks this raises some interesting questions.

Don’t tell me, lemme guess: the memo “provides further evidence, if any were needed, that the FISA court allows itself to be all too easily scammed into willfully pissing on all Constitutional and statutory limits on the Surveillance State.”

@Aleta: One more thing. Lack of access to medical care applies to many or everyone in immigration custody.

Luna said even though military service left Perez disabled, he has not been able to access in detention the medical care available to most veterans.

I remember when Bush and his buds, needing a lot more enlistment for Iraq and Afghanistan, made splashy announcements offering citizenship to immigrants who would join the military.

But no one bothered to explain/help Miguel Perez Jr. do the additional application while he was serving in the military. Or at discharge, or meeting with his trial lawyer, or during the 7 years Miguel Perez served in prison, or at his parole. Released to immediate arrest by ICE.

Everything that is happening to Miguel Perez illustrates what is happening in some form to all people caught up in the ICE reign of terror
.

@TenguPhule: a reckoning for irrational exuberance. We will see but the Schiller PE was higher than any period in history except for the dot com bubble. The obvious bubble (small capital total but an obvious bubble none the less) is Bitcoin which is collapsing totally. Wouldn’t be surprise if other worthless tech stuff goes up in vapor, too.

I worry that 27% isn’t the operable number anymore. Trump has been between 35% and 40% for the last eight months no matter what happens. And while I know day to day approval ratings aren’t entirely trustworthy, today 538 has Trump approval going over 40% for the first time in a while (40.2%)

So true. I guess at least a little commitment to the truth is a precursor to irony and self-awareness? He also has a pattern of accusing the other side of what he’s guilty of doing, and just at the moment he’s most engaged in it or exposed for it.

No. The dossier rhymes with a lot of events, but it isn’t precisely true. Carter Page went to Russia and talked to some Russians, but not the ones identified in the dossier. And the dossier says they were talking about a payoff, but we don’t know what they were talking about. Page says it was innocuous.

Sorry Cheryl, but wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that the dossier hasn’t yet been confirmed or refuted? To use your two examples: 1) just because Page is known to have met with officials not listed doesn’t mean he DIDN’T meet with the listed ones, and 2) they certainly COULD have been talking about a payout — Page is hardly trustworthy here.

I just don’t know that we can conclude that the dossier isn’t true based on this.

@Immanentize: Obviously they’re usually correlated. But to the extent it’s relevant to point out a Dow drop in a thread about the memo I assume it’s trying to pin the drop on some impact of Trump on the economy; that’d show up more in US than non-US equities. You see this with the performance of US vs Non-US since the election; US outperforming when post election, underperforming after inauguration when it turned out Trump couldn’t get anything done and tax cuts might not happen, and then catching up again once the GOP figured out how to give everyone free money. Go look at VTI vs VXUS from Election Day 2016 to today: you see this dynamic plus increased valuations overall thanks mostly to the whole world doing alright.

@Zach: Human intelligence is likely to be like that. The trouble is that without other corroborating sources, there’s no way to tell what’s right and what just rhymes. Hence the need for additional sources, which I’m sure were included in the application for a FISA warrant.

@clay: “True” was probably not the best word. I agree that we don’t know how much can be confirmed or refuted. Part of the problem is that, although the Trumpies have denied some of it, like Michael Cohen, they all lie like crazy. And if we think about the inaccuracies in transmission of information among humans, the possibilities grow.

I think that the best way to look at the dossier is as a starting point for investigations like Mueller is doing. Depending on how it was used and what else was offered as evidence, it could have a legitimate place in a FISA document too.

@SiubhanDuinne: To all the denizens of Balloon Juice and to the few of you who I have met personally: thanks for all of the wishes. I will try to work full time starting Monday, although sometimes my co-workers are not easy on my heart. (The painful part is that these people are NOT stupid and are generally excellent at what they do.)

Normally, I hang out at Charlie Pierce’s shebeen, but its Facebook comment hosting has been acting up recently, so I decided to come here. I know that OM sometimes talks about me, but I was not expecting this reception!

Since this thread is about the memo, let me offer my two cents: The memo isn’t going to change anybody’s mind and isn’t supposed to. I think that Mueller is going to come up with something much more serious than obstruction of justice — something like blatant treason that would normally compel Republican congressmen to impeach and convict. The memo provides an out for these congressmen: “this is such a serious charge, and we can’t be certain that there was no anti-Trump conspiracy.”